I know many people—good friends, in fact—who would never read fiction, especially fantasy or science fiction, treating it with an avoidance akin to a fear of spiders or snakes. Then there are readers like me, who rarely touch nonfiction because if we want to experience life, we live it. Sure, it can be interesting to read a biography of someone famous, infamous, or historically significant—but like my wife, I’ll wait until their obituary appears in The New York Times.

This post was inspired by a prompt from Stacy Benedict, who I follow on WordPress. She is an urban fantasy and science fiction author, currently working on her fifth novel in the urban fantasy series, Primordial Realms. She posted: Why people love to read Fantasy.

Reading Stacy’s post got me thinking about that. I love reading science fiction—it feels like preparing myself for the future. Nonfiction tells you what happened; fiction lets you run simulations on what could happen. It is training your brain to accept unfamiliar rules and adapt to shifting realities rather than freezing when assumptions break. That flexibility translates directly to problem-solving in an unpredictable world. There is no doubt in my mind that having read and written science fiction has aided my career in Information Technology. I have solved many real-world problems inspired by the worlds I have visited.

Ultimately, reading any genre is like feeding a prompt into an AI: the book is the prompt, the reader is the engine, and the final output is how it leaves you feeling.